The present invention relates to tone generation methods, polyphonic and monophonic instruments, and instrument interfaces that a user or a musician may interact with for the purpose of creating an array of different sounds.
The technique of a touch sensitive based surface as a user interface, has been developed for many different applications, including musical instruments and other pragmatic means. This technique was developed by such scientists as Hugh Le Caine, who also created the first voltage controlled synthesizer which was a monophonic performance instrument. More specifically in relation to a touch sensitive based instrument however, was Hugh Le Caine's invention of the “Printed Circuit Keyboard.” This particular invention, which was completed in 1962, was operated by the conductivity of a musician's finger using conductive material evaporated onto an insulator backed sheet. A small current was translated from the musician's finger from one conductive section to another, to complete the circuit. Although this was a brilliant and inventive step towards the evolution of many of it's applications, including a tone generation based instrument, this particular system, governed initially by electronic means, was still limited to a single indication of essentially turning the note on or off with a limited frequency range. This also meant that the availability of changing the dynamics or the intensity of the sound by the musician was not an option.
At present, such familiar methods that are prominently employed are capacitance and resistance based touch pads or surfaces which again, when utilized in the context of a musical instrument, may often present the limitation of at most switching the tone on or off. Other touch sensitive based musical instruments in the past and present have continually been limited for similar reasons including the constant reliability to the traditional piano keyboard arrangement.
Instruments that do retain a conventional user interface and/or arrangements based upon the 12 tone system of music, such as stringed instruments, or chordophones and wind instruments, or aerophones, commonly hold a limiting factor to the number of notes that one may produce. This is apparent when a limited number of strings or valves are available to the user. In addition to this restrictive factor, the length of strings, or in the case of aerophones, the given length of air columns that have been established creates another limitation to the accessibility of a much broader range of frequencies within each given instrument. When these acoustical methods for generating variations in pitch are coupled with an analog and/or digital electronic means for the output of sound, pitch shifting can often be a plausible solution to extending these parameters. However the essential interface that corresponds to the physically generated sounds is still condensed to the specific range that the given instrument is fundamentally capable of providing, which again may present a small range of tones and pitches. These systems, which an instrument and its relative pitches relate to, ultimately have a number of limitations that inhibit one from creating a multiplicity of acoustical features, pitches, tones, and overall sound without the use of otherwise fundamentally creating sounds through digital means. This is especially dominant among monophonic instruments that rely on digital filters for the initial manipulation in creating a variety of tonal features.
A primary difficulty with certain interfaces such as instrument keyboards, is that particular acoustic qualities can not be realized in accordance with a key. These qualities include tones created by such instruments as the violin, whereby a violin can provide a musician with the ability to sustain a note while changing its dynamic. A violin can also provide the user with such qualities as the effect of vibrato. A mechanical based instrument such as the piano, where one may create a specific staccato effect through the mechanics of a key, however can be improved upon by combining the attributes of both kinds of interfaces.
Furthermore, the maximization of notes or keys available to the user within an interface autonomous from the sound generation element is often restrained in the case of smaller sized instruments. In this instance, the arrangement of spacing is simply not condensed in an efficient way restricting the number of notes or keys that a user may access. This can also confine one from creating certain kinds of musical qualities and complexities in the overall composition of sound design that one may prefer to achieve.
The method of creating polyphonic sounds by using the means of fluid or water for tone generation, is also at present, a rarely utilized technique, when it is in fact just another method for creating physical sound that holds versatility that may compare with the possible range of sounds created by a string, wind, percussive or even digitally sound generating instruments.
The use of a “Tone Wheel” is another technique for providing sound that is not often presently employed as well. This idea was pioneered by Thaddeus Cahill, who used the principle within his invention of the “Dynamophone” or “Telbarmonium.” The invention of this instrument preceded another invention named the “Hammond Organ” “Hammond Organ,” which also used the concept of the tone wheel and was patented approximately 37 years after the “Dynamophone” in 1934. The “Hammond Organ,” which was invented by Laurens Hammond, also uses the same principle of having a multiplicity of tone wheels to create separate pitches. In this instance, each tone wheel is made up of a different number of teeth, to ultimately create a change in the magnetic field and the voltage of each rotating tone wheel's respective magnetic pickup. This creates a variation in the frequency given off by each and every given tone wheel within a set. Although this method results in an efficient and prominent system for creating a variation in frequency, the realization of an oscillating or rotating element coupled with a transducer of some form, has rarely ever included the addition of a third factor, such as the element of friction or the density and the state of the fluid surrounding its particular configuration.
Moreover, although the concept of using the physical state of water, or more generally, the concept of utilizing fluid in its liquid state coupled with fluid in its gaseous state is also not commonly employed as a means for tone generation. Such methods have however, been realized in the past, including within such instruments as a water driven tone generating organ dating back hundreds of years. The methods for combining water or fluid with new techniques, or previously existing tone generation methods, such as the tone wheel, is also rarely utilized for musical purposes, which again, can in fact provide a very broad range of acoustical, tone and pitch generation qualities.